


Alone at the Graveyard

by mocinno



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 03:20:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20167288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mocinno/pseuds/mocinno
Summary: Sometimes, Byleth visits Garreg Mach's graveyard.3H spoilers up to (and including) Chapter 9.





	Alone at the Graveyard

On his off days, Byleth would visit the monastery's cemetery. Not often; he usually had better things to fill his time than depressed thoughts.

He hadn't even known of its existence, until Jeralt had shown him the graves there. The only relevant one had its words smudged off by years of wear.

He didn't know his mother's name.

He didn't even know his mother's _name._

After Jeralt died, Byleth went through the room and found the ring.

It felt cold under his gloves. Too small for his own hands and far too big for anyone else's.

He ran his finger over the blue and pink gems, certain his mother did the same once.

His mother. 

Staring at the headstone, its name obscured, he tried to feel something. Tried to imagine the mother who once was, so kind and bright that even the Blade Breaker could fall for her.

There was nothing.

His mother was, to him, no one. Perhaps she had lived once, flitting through the monastery, laughing with Alois and crying with Rhea. Perhaps she wandered the same steps he did, watering the greenhouse flowers and helping cook in the dining hall. Yet now she was dead. Gone, nothing more than a whisper.

Byleth had no pity, no sorrow. The headstone was nothing more than a slab of rock with dates on it.

The ring felt heavy in his hands. It was a dead woman's. He tried, again, to imagine her gentle hands running over the stones, quiet footsteps as she entered the chapel for her daily prayer.

Nothing. He didn't even know her name. Who was she, but a ghost?

The gravestone next to hers was better. Or worse, really.

Jeralt Eisner

"Blade Breaker"

1180

The masons hadn't known Jeralt's year of birth. No one did.

A mystery till the end.

Byleth never thought of Jeralt as his father. Never truly. He was his guardian, his mentor, yes, but his father? He couldn't possibly imagine it.

Still, the pain that shook him when Jeralt died was foreign and terrible. It grabbed him with both hands, knocked him to the ground, paralyzed him.

There were still so many questions. So, so many. Jeralt had wanted to talk to him all month, but then the mission had happened, and then. Then what? He died, in front of a helpless Byleth. Who was Byleth, truly? Why did his journal frame Byleth as a baby without a pulse, without tears? Why did he run from the Knights of Seiros? Why did he have to die, when Byleth's life was changing so rapidly, when more than ever Byleth needed him?

He set the ring in the grass next to Jeralt's grave.

He would come back for it, one day. When the world was smaller and he felt proud enough to say that, yes, the Blade Breaker was his father, and yes, that mystery woman was his mother. On that day he would reclaim the ring, and maybe reclaim himself, as well. He would be more than a son; he would be himself, no matter his memories, no matter his past.

**Author's Note:**

> sad Bylad hours


End file.
